“We spent the better part of our childhoods as neighbors, our two families right next door,” Joely wrote in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter published on Monday, Jan. 2. “I adored Mama Debbie — she was such a character. And I got another sister and a brother in the deal, right there on the beach!” Carrie's late father, Eddie Fisher — who died at age 82 of complications from a hip surgery in 2010 — welcomed Joely with his third wife, Connie Stevens, in 1967.

Carrie and Joely in May 2007. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

“During our transcontinental chat before Carrie’s fateful flight from London to LA, we promised we’d spend Christmas together. It’s a promise we kept, although not in a way either of us had anticipated. Throughout the holiday, I sat by her side in a hospital room filled with a cacophony of sounds made by the machines keeping her barely alive," the 'Til Death actress continued.

"Debbie, of course, was there as well. She told me that she’d been praying for my time. More time for Carrie, for herself and for Connie. I knew if those prayers weren’t answered, Debbie might very well join her daughter."

“She would have wanted us to celebrate her life, her words and for Billie to be whole,” Joely added. “In time she will be. She is smart and soulful and magic. My sister Tricia Leigh Fisher and I vow to be whatever our niece Billie needs us to be.”

“You all lost Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher; I lost my hero, my mentor, my mirror,” she continued. “My brother, Todd Fisher, has lost his sister and his mother, whom he has said will lay to rest together. There is no universe where these ladies are not due their appropriate pedestals, and both will be memorialized in separate ceremonies in coming weeks.”

“We will honor these two magical people who have left the tribe in the way they lived, with grandeur and grace. I will soldier on," she concluded.

Click through the gallery below to see celebrities who sadly died in 2016.